Sex & gender in 2023

Sounds like Bowers was involved in surgeries on children: "Believe me, we’re doing some magnificent surgeries on these kids, and they’re so determined, and I’m so proud of so many of them and their parents. They’ve been great. But honestly, I can’t sit here and tell you that they have better — or even as good — results. They’re not as functional."

extract

The problem for kids whose puberty has been blocked early isn’t just a lack of tissue but of sexual development. Puberty not only stimulates growth of sex organs. It also endows them with erotic potential. “If you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then your puberty's blocked, it's very difficult to achieve that afterwards,” Bowers said. “I consider that a big problem, actually. It's kind of an overlooked problem that in our ‘informed consent’ of children undergoing puberty blockers, we’ve in some respects overlooked that a little bit.”

Nor is this a problem that can be corrected surgically. Bowers can build a labia, a vaginal canal and a clitoris, and the results look impressive. But, she said, if the kids are “orgasmically naive” because of puberty blockade, “the clitoris down there might as well be a fingertip and brings them no particular joy and, therefore, they’re not able to be responsive as a lover. And so how does that affect their long-term happiness?”

(Continues)

Bowers told me she now finds early puberty blockade inadvisable. “I’m not a fan of blockade at Tanner Two anymore, I really am not,” she told me, using the clinical name of the moment when the first visible signs of puberty manifest. “The idea all sounded good in the very beginning,” she said. “Believe me, we’re doing some magnificent surgeries on these kids, and they’re so determined, and I’m so proud of so many of them and their parents. They’ve been great. But honestly, I can’t sit here and tell you that they have better — or even as good — results. They’re not as functional. I worry about their reproductive rights later. I worry about their sexual health later and ability to find intimacy.”

Bowers knows what the loss of fertility and sexual intimacy might entail: She has three children, all born before she transitioned, and she spent a decade tending to victims of female genital mutilation. “Those women, a lot of them experience broken relationships because they cannot respond sexually,” she said. “And my fear about these young children who never experience orgasm prior to undergoing surgery are going to reach adulthood and try to find intimacy and realize they don’t know how to respond sexually.”

https://www.thefp.com/p/top-trans-doctors-blow-the-whistle

I am Sarah's case asking the Survivor's Network in Brighton for one single sex female rape crisis group to run alongside the existing mixed sex and trans/non binary specific groups -

unherd.com/2022/07/why-im-suing-survivors-network/

*group of

I wonder if this is because they can smell lawsuits coming down the line? Didn't Marci also perform lots of surgeries on children?

I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit in the US from a group de-transitioners who were given puberty blockers - that would blow a hole in a lot of this, as insurance companies would then be hesitant to pay for PBs.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis/Mridul Wadhwa and the Forensic Medical Services Bill -

www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19509343.outcry-plan-educate-bigoted-rape-survivors-trans-rights/

'Wadhwa claimed in the podcast that those worried about policy at local centres should “reach out to them and ask those questions”. Yet, what happens when the women are told that they cannot be guaranteed female support? In advance of the Forensic Medical Services (FMS) Bill debate and Johann Lamont’s amendment to ensure that survivors could request the sex of the examiner, Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood Magazine wrote “Last night I spent an hour on the phone with a heartbroken mother of a girl who was raped by a number of teenage boys and who did not get the support she needed because she was told that a woman counsellor could not be guaranteed. She developed PTSD.” As one woman who attended a meeting with the CEO of RCS wrote: “We reached out to be told that TW are not only women, but female too. The damage that meeting caused us. For so very long. The woman who should have helped us rode all over us. For men. And a fucked up belief in queer theory. What utter bastards. The lot of them.” Why is it so difficult in services that, according to Wadhwa, were “set up with the blood, sweat, and tears of women” and whose “workforce is reserved for women only” to guarantee that a female will be a counsellor if needed?

The reaction of the service to the FMS Bill amendment explained much. The amendment was so small, yet so significant. It was born from the single most important request of the survivors, that they be allowed to request (in the understanding that it might not be guaranteed) the sex of a medical examiner. Surely, we thought, this was such an easy but important way to grant survivors a measure of autonomy and a reassertion of control over their bodies? The reaction of RCS was to fight it. They claimed it was irrelevant, that no examiners were trans so it was immaterial, that it would never be an issue, that more important things were at stake. Perhaps. But if so irrelevant, why not concede a small but vital piece of reassurance? Because, of course, it wasn’t. Because to campaigners like Wadhwa this was, again, a denial of womanhood of those who chose to self-identify into it. Wadhwa’s reaction to the passing of the amendment was to leave the SNP and join Patrick Harvie’s Scottish Greens, a party who – with the honourable exception of Andy Wighman – had refused to sign motions condemning violence against women.'

From this piece - forwomen.scot/10/08/2021/the-real-crisis-at-rape-crisis-scotland/

www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,six-little-words-for-the-word-gender-substitute-sex

www.sundaypost.com/fp/six-small-words-should-not-carry-such-weight-in-rancorous-debate-about-sex-and-gender/

Beira's Place, set up by JKR -

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/rape-crisis-scotland-officials-urge-28718800

Prison information specific to Scotland -

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/01/13/what-does-the-scottish-prison-service-really-think-about-the-gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill-2/

The Scottish Prison Service operate under a self id position and have done since 2014, advised as they were by Scottish Trans Alliance -

Below is a quote from James Morton, of the Scottish Trans Alliance. James is listed as an author of the Scottish Prisons Transgender Policy.

‘We strategized – we strategized – that by working intensively with the Scottish Prison Service to support them to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances, we would be able to ensure that all other public services should be able to do likewise’.

Unsurprisingly, this has lead to a rise of what many people refer to as 'Sudden Onset Prison Dysphoria' (or similar) -

www.nationalreview.com/news/transgender-sex-offenders-placed-in-womens-jails-in-scotland/

archive.ph/2022.10.04-232359/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-scottish-trans-prisoners-changed-gender-after-convictions-pftqbbhg6

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/anger-trans-inmates-revert-males-25840252

And of course - the now very well known case of Isla Bryson -
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64388669

Important to note that 'Isla' was about to be placed into the female prison estate and it was only public outcry (and the pink leggings) which stopped that. That case has prompted change in E and W but not in Scotland.

The President of WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), Marci Bowers, has now expressed concerns about the irreversible effects of puberty blockers. No longer a fan of using puberty blockers at all.

If you want to know what comes out and with a daily update or two on the latest in the gender wars, Barry does daily updates and runs courses on what you can do about it.

https://youtube.com/@edijester

Prisons - Transgender Wing

kpssinfo.org/the-transgender-unit-e-wing/

backintosociety.co.uk/2021/07/31/prison-bosses-put-transgender-sex-offenders-into-female-prisons-because-they-need-association-with-other-women/

Prisons

In which we address people's certainty that they will never go to prison.

Extract from Jackie Doyle-Price, speaking to Parliament last year.

We know also that many women do not belong in prison in the first place. One issue I have been taking up with the Ministry of Justice is the extent to which women are remanded in prison for their own protection. We have a mental health policy that has been removing police cells and prisons as places of safety—recognising that they are not good environments for people who are mentally unwell—but we are still remanding women in prison for their own safety.

I thought it would be only a small number of women, probably no more than a dozen a year. Having raised the issue with the Government, I could not get any data on it. However, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons visited three prisons last year and in total found 68 women who had been remanded in prison for their own protection. They were not people who had committed an offence, and it was not a punishment. It is totally inappropriate for a country such as this to be remanding women in prison for that purpose, and that was in just three prisons. Across the whole system, we know that women being remanded for their own protection are a significant proportion of the prison establishment, and frankly that is not good enough. I am ashamed of it, and I call on the Government to do better.

View the Hansard contribution by Jackie Doyle-Price on Thursday 10 March 2022 https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-03-10/debates/1C377E5F-9903-48CD-A036-1F1728D726B2/InternationalWomen%E2%80%99SDay?highlight=68%20women#contribution-8C48CCA4-479B-4D2F-99CF-6A7C2E45E94C

Yep, women's prisons are being used to house women who have committed no crime, who have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. There are not enough places in mental health units, and the decision has been made that prisons qualify as a "safe place" under the Mental Health Act. How certain can you be that neither you nor anyone you care about will ever be sectioned?

Extract from the Minutes from a Meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System

Present: Sandra Fieldhouse, Team leader for inspection of women’s prisons, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons

Sandra had worked at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons since 2010. She spent eight years as an inspector before becoming team leader of the women’s inspection team, a role she has been in for three years. Prior to 2010, Sandra was an inspector with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation. Her career background before that was as a social worker with young offenders followed by becoming a probation officer and then being involved in the national development and implementation of offending behaviour programmes across the National Probation Service

Sandra: Prison was being used as a place of safety for men, women and children. The lack of central data collection meant this problem remained hidden. In August 2021, HMIP asked six local prisons (three men’s prisons and three women’s prisons) for information about any individuals remanded in the previous 12 months who were so acutely mentally unwell that they should have been diverted from prison. The three women’s prisons identified 68 women who were acutely mentally unwell and had been remanded to prison. The outcome for all of these women was not known but of those for whom the outcome was known, over half were transferred to a secure hospital. There was a need for a better range of community facilities for women facing a mental health crisis.

68 women in just three women's prisons!

The NHS are required under their own rules to provide single sex accommodation.

2010 -

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/hospitals-to-face-fines-over-mixed-sex-wards-2053767.html

Now -

www.nationalworld.com/health/nhs-england-slammed-for-relaxing-single-sex-hospital-rules-after-fines-for-breaches-were-quietly-dropped-3545517

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/objections-to-trans-patients-on-womens-hospital-wards-like-racism-vz309qqtq

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/12/03/the-erosion-of-single-sex-hospital-accommodation-in-scotland/

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/nhs-hospitals-single-sex-accommodation-can-not-be-mixed-sex/

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/12/03/the-erosion-of-single-sex-hospital-accommodation-in-scotland/

In recent years, a woman was raped on a 'single sex' hospital ward by a male and the hospital lied to the Police for a year, saying that it couldn't have happened because there were no men on the ward -

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/hospital-says-patient-could-not-26506744

"One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex"

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers

So, going to drop a variety of links -

Equality Act 2010 (EQA2010) -

www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/your-rights-under-equality-act-2010

There are nine protected characteristics:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

Additional things to note about the Protected Characteristics -

The characteristic of gender reassignment does not necessarily refer to someone who has had surgery or medical treatment. They merely have to be - 'proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex.'

The protected characteristic of religion or belief includes gender critical beliefs as a protected belief as established by the Forstater appeal. I will do a more detailed post about that separately.

The single sex exemptions detailed in the EQA2010 -

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7

The single sex provisions allowed in sport -

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/14/5

Yes. The NHS has embarrassingly had to delete their inaccurate & dangerous advice that puberty blockers were reversible and harmless to a more accurate:

"Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.
Although GIDS advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.
It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations".

Can be seen in their sales pitch for GIDS here:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/

A complete reversal of their previous stance - yet no questions asked about how they were allowed to deliberately mislead children and their parents for so long.

Jess Bradley performed a ‘Vagina Monologue’ which ended with something like “My vagina looks like a penis, but that’s okay” - to lots of female whoops from the audience.

Josh/Jess Bradley

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3320513-Jess-Bradley-first-transgender-student-officer-suspended-after-flashing-photos

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3321764-Jess-Bradley-suspended-Part-II

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3325623-Jess-Bradley-a-government-advisor-on-womens-rights-suspended-by-NUS-over-indecent-blog-Part-iii

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3323623-Who-is-really-funding-Jess-Bradleys-defence

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3626735-Update-on-the-Jess-Bradley-position

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3352843-First-there-was-Jess-Bradley-then-the-Challenors-now-Edward-Lord

Wyatt...damn you auto cucumber.

If you like you Denton's Document info on a podcast, Edie What and Kit Kowalski do a regular 'news from down under' update and went into the background which takes you though the whole shebang...

Two parts, this is part 1.

They are very listenable. Pop some headphones on and have a listen.